ICEfaces® v1.7.0 Release Notes April 14th, 2008

Overview

This document contains the following sections:

• Changes in This Release (v1.7.0)
• Migration Notes
• Supported Platforms
  • Java 
  • Browsers
  • Application Servers
  • Portal Containers
  • IDE Tools
• Known Issues
  
  • General
  • Documentation
  • JSP Markup
  • ICEfaces Component Suite
  • JSF 1.2
  • Portlets
  • Async HTTP Server (AHS)
  • Sample Applications
  • Application Servers
• Support
• About ICEfaces
• License information

Changes in This Release (v1.7.0)

ICEfaces v1.7.0 is a certified production release featuring over 450 enhancements, improvements, and bug fixes.

Review the Known Issues prior to using this release. Review the Migration Notes if you plan to use an existing ICEfaces application with 1.7. 

Please report any issues with this build to the ICEfaces forums or the ICEfaces JIRA issue tracker.

ICEfaces Component Suite

• New Theme 
  • A new CSS style theme has been added in this release, "Rime".
  • Provides a fresh new look for the ICEfaces Components and a great starting of point for your own applications.

• New Tooltip Panel 
  • The new ice:panelTooltip component can be associated with a panelGroup component to automatically display when the user hovers over the panelGroup for a configurable period of time.
  • Can be configured to automatically hide when the user moves the mouse off the triggering component or  clicks outside the panelTooltip.
  • Supports both a static and dynamic usage mode so it's contents may be updated based on the source component triggering its display.

• New Popup/Context Menu
  • A new ice:menuPopup component can be associated to any panelGroup component to display a popup context menu when the user clicks the context menu (typically rt-mouse button) button over the panelGroup.
  • Can also be used on UIData components such as ice:dataTable and ice:panelSeries.

• New Divider Panel  (Split Pane)
  • New ice:panelDivider component can be used to divide a region of the page that contains two child panels or components. The user can drag the divider to resize the child component regions. 
  • Supports both vertical and horizontal orientations

• New Google Map Component
  • ice:gMap component supports display of interactive Google Maps.
  • Supports additional functionality via the following optional child components:
    • ice:gMapControl
    • ice:gMapDirection
    • ice:gMapGeoXml
    • ice:gMapLatLng
    • ice:gMapLatLngs
    • ice:gMapMarker

• New Portlet  Component
  • ICEfaces portlets must be contained within the new "ice:portlet" component.

• New Rich Text Editor Component 
  • New ice:inputRichText component provides comprehensive support for editing rich text and html content.
  • Leverages the industry-leading FCKeditor JavaScript library.    

• New Media Player Component 
  • New ice:outputMedia component supports embedding media players in your ICEfaces page.
  • Supported formats include Flash, WMV, RealPlayer, and Quicktime.

• New Layout Panel
  • The new ice:panelLayout component provides support for relative positioning of components within the panel, such as when using IDEs that support visual  design of JSP or Facelet pages.

• Data Table Enhancements
  • User-resizable datatable columns (drag column header border to resize column)
  • Headers can now span multiple rows and columns
  • Row-level grouping - individual cells can span multiple dataTable rows

• Improved Partial Submit Messages Support
  • ICEfaces input components that are in an invalid state as a result of user-interactions will now continue to display their error messages in any associated ice:message or ice:messages components, even after subsequent input components with "partialSubmit=true" are processed.

• New SelectOneRadio, SelectManyCheckbox Layout and Grouping Options
  • The ice:selectOneRadio and ice:selectManyCheckbox components can now support a "spread" layout capability that enables each radioButton or checkbox to be placed in different container components (e.g. across columns in a table, etc.).

• New Popup Panel Auto-Positioning
  • The ice:panelPopup component now supports active auto-positioning behaviors:
    • Auto Center: Positions the popup in the center of the page.
    • Auto Position: Positions the popup at the specified coordinates over the page.

• New activation mode for MenuBar
  • The ice:menuBar component has been enhanced to support a new "displayOnClick" attribute. When set the child menus will not display until one of the root-level menu-items is clicked on with the mouse.

• Connection Status Component with Error Dialogs
  • The ice:outputConnectionStatus component has been enhanced to optionally display popup error dialogs for session expiry or connection lost errors.

• Improved Drag & Drop Performance and Scalability
  • The panelGroup's draggable implemention has been optimized to drastically improve performance and scalabiliy when a large number of instances are used on a page, such as in dataTable rows or treeNodes.

• XHTML Compliance
  • The ICEfaces Component Suite components now render browser markup that is XHTML v1.0 Transitional compliant, as defined by the W3C specification.

Framework & Bridge

• Improved Asynchronous Connection Mgmt. and Robustness
  • Asynchronous connection mgmt. has been improved to reduce the frequency of "Connection Lost" failures.
  • Default connection settings values have been adjusted to be more tolerant of connections with higher latency.
  • Issues with logging of "Query does not contain parameter named: ice.session" have been resolved.
  • Async thread cleanup has been improved to reduce the possiblity of threads not being garbage-collected after session expiry.

• New DisposableBean API
  • A new, more reliable API for ensuring bean resources are cleaned up when views go out of scope has been added. See "The DisposableBean Interface" section in the ICEfaces Developer's Guide for details.

• Improved Performance
  • Significant client-side performance improvements have been made when handling large incremental changes to the UI, such as expanding or collapsing a tree node with a large number of child nodes, or updating a dataTable with a large number of rows and/or columns.

• Reduced Memory Consumption
  • The ICEfaces JavaScript Bridge has been optimized for reduced static and dynamic memory consumption in all browsers.

• Integration with Application Server Asynchronous Request Processing (ARP) APIs
  • ICEfaces now optionally supports ARP configurations for the following servers:
    • Glassfish v2 UR1
    • ICEfaces Asynchronous HTTP Server (AHS)
    • Jetty 6.1
    • Tomcat 6 and JBoss 4.2
  • See the "Optimizing Asynchronous Communications for Scalability" section in the ICEfaces Develpoer's Guide for more information.

Portlet Support

• ICEfaces now supports the following portal containers:
  • Liferay Portal
  • BEA WebLogic Portal
  • JBoss Portal
  • Apache Pluto
  • JetSpeed 2

• Support for JSR-168 Portlets
  • ICEfaces now supports the JSR-168 portlet APIs for PortletRequest (RenderRequest) and its affiliates (PortalContext, PortletMode, PortletSession, PortletContext, PortletPreferences and WindowState), as well as PortletConfig.
  • The ICEfaces Component Suite components now support the JSR-168 portlet theme style classes. ICEfaces components used in a portlet will automatically adopt the style theme of the containing portal page.S

• Improved ICEfaces portlet deployment flexibility and robustness
  • It is now possible to deploy ICEfaces portlets sourced from multiple .war files to a single portal page, including mixing of both synchronous and asynchronous portlets.
  • Support for multiple portlets in separate .war files requires configuring the new ICEfaces Async HTTP Server (AHS) servlet.

• New Portlet documentation
  • See the "Developing Portlets with ICEfaces" section in the ICEfaces Developer's Guide

• New portlet sample applications
  • A portlet version of the ICEfaces Component Showcase sample application demonstrates many of the ICEfaces components running as portlets.
  • A new Async Chat portlet demonstrates using ICEfaces ajax-push within a portlet.

Async HTTP Server (AHS)

• Now included in ICEfaces core distribution
  • Formerly a stand-alone project, the AHS is now included in the core ICEfaces distribution.
  • See the new "Introduction to the Asynchronous HTTP Server" section in the Advanced Topics chapter of the ICEfaces Developer's Guide for details.

• New Servlet deployment option
  • Servlet configuration enables straightforward deployment for use with ICEfaces portlets.
  • Required in a portal environment to support multiple asynchronous ICEfaces portlets deployed from different WAR files.

Improved Support for 3rd Party Frameworks

• JBoss Seam
  • Updated documentation, see the "JBoss Seam Integration" section in the Advanced Topics chapter of the ICEfaces Developer's Guide for details.
  • Enhanced Seam Component Showcase sample project adds new 1.7 components. Available as a separate download here or via SVN: "http://anonsvn.icefaces.org/repo/projects/seam-component-showcase/". Supports the following additional configurations:
    • Seam / ICEfaces / Glassfish 2.1
    • Seam / ICEfaces / JBoss 4.2
    • Seam / ICEfaces / JBoss Portal
    • Seam / ICEfaces / Tomcat 6
    • Seam / ICEfaces / WebLogic 10
    • Seam / ICEfaces / Liferay Portal / Glassfish 2

• Spring Web Flow
  • See the new "Spring Framework Integration" section in the Advanced Topics chapter of the ICEfaces Developer's Guide for details.
  • New Spring Web Flow 1. sample project ("Sell Item") available as a separate download here or via SVN: "http://anonsvn.icefaces.org/repo/projects/icefaces-swf-sellitem-jsf/".

Improved Documentation 

• ICEfaces Getting Started Guide
  • New chapter - "ICEfaces Design Decisions — Using ICEfaces in Your Project" covers important design decisions to be made regarding how ICEfaces will be configured, used, and deployed in your project.

• ICEfaces Developer's Guide
  • New and enhanced sections:
    • JavaScript API Reference
    • Using ICEfaces with JSF 1.2
    • ICEfaces Library Dependencies
    • Connection Mgmt.
    • Server-initiated Rendering API
    • Optimizing Asynchronous Communications
    • Developing Portlets with ICEfaces
    • Appendix A - ICEfaces Library Dependencies Matrix
    • Appendix B - ICEfaces Configuration Parameter Overview 

Improved Sample Applications

• All new Component Showcase 
  • Seperate apps. for JSP, Facelets, and Portlets versions (for ease of code-comprehension)
  • Simplification of some component demos that better illustrate best-practices
  • Cleaner styling and layout fully leverages the new "Rime" theme.
  • Now possible to view both page markup and backing-bean source code from within the app.
  • Each demo lists additional resources for components used in the demo, such as component tld docs, tutorials, etc.

• New Build Targets for most popular application servers
  • The build system for the sample applications and tutorials included in the ICEfaces bundle has been enhanced to provide specific build targets for the most popular JEE application servers making it easier to create sample .war files that will deploy successfully to the application server of your choice. 
  • See "Chapter 3 - Running the ICEfaces Sample Applications" in the ICEfaces Getting Started Guide for details.

• Default builds and prebuild .war files now target Tomcat 6 w/ JSF 1.2
• The default ant builds and prebuilt .war files for the sample applications now use the "tomcat6.0" build target, which is suitable for deployment to Tomcat 6 and uses the Sun JSF 1.2 runtime.
• To deploy the samples an application server other than Tomcat 6, you must use the build target for the desired server. Type "ant help" for more information.

Refer to the ICEfaces JIRA Change Log for detailed information on all changes included in this release.

Migration Notes

The following changes may affect some applications that were originally developed with a previous version of ICEfaces.

DEFAULT_SUFFIX Parameter Required

• Starting with 1.7 ICEfaces requires that the standard JSF “javax.faces.DEFAULT_SUFFIX” parameter be defined in the web.xml file. In previous releases the absence of a DEFAULT_SUFFIX entry was tolerated for some .jspx applications.

ice:message(s) with Partial Submit

• The behavior of ice:message(s) when used with partialSubmit-enabled components in a form has changed in 1.7 to better align it with standard JSF behavior.
• The change is to retain the display of error messages for any components that:
• Were in an invalid state prior to the partialSubmit
• Are not the component that is the subject of the partialSubmit
• This supports the use-case where a user enters data in a partial-submit form, enters an invalid value in field1, sees the error message, then moves to field2 and enters a value there without first correcting the entered value in field1. Prior to this release the original error message from the invalid entry into field1 would disappear when field2 was partialSubmitted. Now error messages for all invalid state components will continue to be displayed until they are in a valid state.
• See ICE-1883 for more information.

selectInputDate Timezone Support

• The ice:selectInputDate component has improved support for timezones which has affected the default timezone that it will now use if no timezone is specified.
• Care should be taken to use the same timezone between UIComponents that view and edit dates and times, otherwise data corruption and misrepresentation can occur.
• Tips:
• You should add an f:convertDateTime child tag with a timeZone attribute to specify a timezone for the ice:selectInputDate component to use. When no timeZone attribute is specified, the f:convertDateTime component will use GMT as a default.
• If the ice:selectInputDate component is used without a corresponding f:convertDateTime component it will also use GMT as the default timezone.
• Note for Seam users that the s:convertDateTime component uses the application server's local timezone as its default, and not GMT.

Command Sort Header Style Change

• The ice:commandSortHeader component has been improved to permit styling of the up/down arrows using images, tied to the themes. This provides more flexability in their appearance over the single arrow style supported previously.
• Note that the "arrow" attribute on this component is now deprecated and has no effect.
• Refer to the TLD documentation for the commandSortHeader for more information.

jsp:root Tag Support in Facelets

• Starting with 1.7 when using the jsp:root tag on a facelets-based page the following javascript error will occur and the page won't work anymore: "uncaught exception: couldn't find container for property: bridge".
• JSP directives should not be used in a Facelets context. A workaround is to use <jsp:root jsfc="f:view">, so that <jsp:root> will become <f:view>, or completely remove the <jsp:root> tag. 
  

Asynchronous Application Cleanup (ViewListener Deprecated)

• Managed beans, particularly session and request scoped beans, can have references to resources that may need to be specifically dealt with when the beans go out of scope.
• For asynchronous ICEfaces application, the previous recommended solution for this was the com.icesoft.faces.context.ViewListener interface. The ViewListener interface is now deprecated in favor of the  DisposableBean interface. While ViewListener could be applied more broadly (i.e., to non-bean classes), it was more difficult to use and worked in more restricted situations.
• For more information see “The DisposableBean Interface” section in the ICEfaces Developer's Guide.

Portlet Development

• ICEfaces support for portlet development has been completely revamped for 1.7, with new support for JSR-168 portlets.
• Refer to the “Developing Portlets with ICEfaces” section in the ICEfaces Developer's Guide for details.

Supported Platforms

This release of ICEfaces has been verified on the following platforms:

Java

ICEfaces is supported on the following Java versions:

• JDK 1.4 and greater
• MyFaces and Sun JSF 1.1 runtimes
• Sun JSF 1.2 runtime

Browsers

Vendor	Product	Version
Apple	Safari	1.3, 2.x, 3.x
Microsoft	Internet Explorer	6, 7
Mozilla	Firefox	1.x+, 2.0, 3.0B5
Opera	Opera	9.x
Opera	Opera Mobile	8.65

Application Servers

Vendor	Product	Version
Apache	Tomcat	5.5, 6.0
BEA Systems Inc.	Weblogic Server	8.1, 9.2, 10.0
JBoss Inc.	JBoss Application Server	4.0.5, 4.2.x
IBM	Websphere Application Server	6.0.2, 6.1
Oracle	Oracle Application Server Container for J2EE (OC4J)	10.1.3
SAP	NetWeaver	7.0
Sun Microsystems	GlassFish	v2
Sun Microsystems	Sun Java System Application Server	8.1, 9.x
Webtide	Jetty	6.1.x

Portal Containers

Vendor	Product	Version
Apache	Pluto	1.1.4
Apache	Jetspeed 2	2.1.3
BEA	WebLogic Portal	10
Liferay	Liferay Portal	4.3.x+
RedHat	JBoss Portal	2.6.x

IDE Tools

ICEfaces IDE integration bundles are available for the following development tools:

Vendor	Product	Version
BEA	Workshop Studio 3, Workshop Studio for JSF	3.0, 3.1, 3.2
Eclipse	Eclipse/Web Tools Platform	3.1.1/1.0, 3.2/1.5, 3.3/2.0
Genuitec LLC	MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench	5.0, 5.5, 6.0.1
Oracle	JDeveloper 10g Studio Edition	10.1.3
Sun	NetBeans	5.0, 5.5, 6.0

Note: Tool integration bundles may be updated independently from ICEfaces releases. Refer to
http://downloads.icefaces.org for the most recent tool bundles and associated ICEfaces runtime libraries.

Known Issues

The following section describes the most commonly encountered known issues with this release. For a complete reference of all outstanding issues please refer to the ICEfaces.org JIRA issue tracker.

General

• If at any time the asynchronous connection between the browser and the server is lost due to a network interruption, reloading the page will generally restore normal operation from the previous application state.

• ICEfaces pages included via <jsp:include> or <tiles:insert> have distinct PersistentFacesContext objects even if they are included by the same parent page. For this reason, application-initiated renders will apply only to the inclusion associated with the particular PersistentFacesContext.

• Inclusion of ICEfaces content from JSP is not compatible with MyFaces.

• Attempting to retrieve a Request parameter in the url using the following syntax is not supported (returns null):
     FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequestParameterMap().get(paramName);
  A workaround for this issue is to retrieve the Request parameter using the following alternative syntax:
   ((HttpServletRequest)FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequest()).getParameter(paramName);

• Cookies can be set though the ((BridgeExternalContext) FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext()).addCookie(new Cookie("test","test")); method.

• If you specify the com.icesoft.faces.connectionLostRedirectURI configuration parameter in your web.xml file and forget to single quote the URL, the resulting js configuration string will be corrupted. Also note that an ice:outputConnectionStatus component must be included on the page in order for this parameter to be active.

Documentation

• Page 12 of the ICEfaces Getting Started Guide incorrectly indicates that the path to the Component Showcase applications is "/icefaces/samples/componentshowcase2/...". The correct path to the Component Showcase applications is "/icefaces/samples/componentshowcase/...".

JSP Markup

• UIComponentBodyTag processing supports only a single call to doAfterBody(). The full JSP lifecycle for iterative body processing is not supported.

• The first-generation children of the DataTable's table-header and column-header facets must be standard JSF components. For example, plain markup cannot be contained on its own within these facets, it must be wrapped in a panelGrid and the panelGrid, in turn, can be contained within the facet.

• JSP Page to Document conversion escapes &nbsp, but &nbsp in JSP Documents must be manually escaped by the developer as &amp;nbsp. Similarly, & characters must be escaped as &amp;.

• Non-JSF JSP tags (<jsp:xxx/>, etc.) embedded in JSP Pages and Documents are ignored by the ICEfaces parser with the exception of the inclusion mechanism (see Markup Reference in Developer's Guide for details).

• Java code (<% ...%>, etc.) embedded in JSP Pages and Documents is ignored by the ICEfaces parser with the exception of the inclusion mechanism (see Markup Reference in Developer's Guide for details).

• Input documents must be well-formed XML.

• Deprecated HTML elements, specifically the FONT element, do not respond properly to DOM manipulation functions in the ICEfaces client-side JavaScript bridge. (see HTML 4.01 Specification for details on deprecated HTML Elements).

• Pages should contain both a <head> tag and a <body> tag so that they are well-formed XHTML and ICEfaces can easily add a link to its own custom JavaScript library.

• Any ICEfaces page included from a JSP via <jsp:include/> must contain a <body> tag as the content of the <body> tag is precisely the content inserted into the including page.

• Tiles tags are not supported within ICEfaces pages, but ICEfaces pages may be included via Tiles.

• If multiple ICEfaces inclusions are performed by the same parent JSP, each ICEfaces form must have a manually applied unique ID.

• JSP Pages are dynamically converted to JSP Documents for processing by the ICEfaces parser, so it is important not to mix JSP Page and JSP Document types when performing static inclusion.

• UTF-8 encoding must be used for all source files for ICEfaces (jsp jspx, etc.)

ICEfaces Component Suite

• All ICEfaces Component Suite components must be enclosed in a JSF form component (i.e. ice:form, h:form, or ui:form).

• Effects (various components)
  • In Internet Explorer the Fade, Appear, and Pulsate effects will not transition when used with select elements.
  • In Safari the Highlight effect will does not work on buttons and lists.

• gMap 
  • Requires an API key which must be obtained from the Google Maps website.
  • Client browser must be able to access the Google Maps website URL (http://maps.google.com)

• menuPopup
  • menuPopup is not supported in the Opera browser due to a browser security feature that prevents the override of the browser's own context menu.

• panelPopup
  • When using a modal panelPopup it may be necessary to ensure that the body region of the page covers the entire visible region of the document or the component used to block user interaction with the document may not cover the entire page. To accomplish this a surrounding DIV sized to 100% width and height can be used to enclose all content in the document body. For example:
    

    <html><body><div style="width:100%;height:100%;"> ...page content... </div></body></html> 

• Resizable dataTable Columns
  • Columns that are resized via user-interaction will be reset to their original sizes if the page is reloaded.

• inputRichText
  • The FCKeditor JavaScript library that is the basis for the ice:inputRichText component does not currently support the Opera browser.

JSF 1.2

• ICEfaces must use JSF 1.1 "compatibility mode" within JSF 1.2 environments. See the "Using ICEfaces with JSF 1.2" topic in the ICEfaces Developer's Guide for details.

Portlets

• The following ICEfaces components are known not to work correctly in a portlet environment:
  • ice:gMapDirection
  • ice:inputRichText - using this component in more than one portlet on a page may cause problems with the functioning of this component.
  • Drag & drop (via ice:panelGroup) - using drag-and-drop in more than one portlet on a page may cause drag-and-drop to not function in some of the portlets on the page.

• When using ICEfaces with Liferay Portal 4.x positioning problems may occur with components that rely on dynamic positioning, such as ice:panelPopup, ice:menuBar, and menuPopup. This issue is related to an aggressive styling behavior in Liferay and there is a work-around identified. See ICE-2967 for details.

• The ICEfaces Component Showcase portlet sample application may have styling and layout related issues related to the specific portal container and portal theme being used. The primary intention is to show component functionality in a portlet context. It may be necessary to customize the specific styles being used to work well within the portal theme, etc.

Async HTTP Server (AHS)

• When shutting down or undeploying an ICEfaces application configured to use AHS, the application server may log harmless exceptions related to the classloader unloading classes before framework threads have finished running (related to JMS).

• Using AHS with Glassfish v2 is not supported in this release due to an issue that results in the Glassfish server not being able to restart after an AHS application has been deployed in a previous server session.

Sample Applications

• Of the four varieties of the Component Showcase application (jsp, portlet, portlet-enh, and portlets), only the facelet-enh version includes the Description and Source tabs for viewing documentation and resources related to the  components being demonstrated.

• The Component Showcase enhanced facelets sample application  (icefaces/samples/component-showcase/facelet-enh) requires JDK 1.5 to compile and run. All other samples in this release require JDK 1.4+.

Application Servers

• General

• ICEfaces does not support session persistence. Some application servers enable distributable session features by default. In these cases serialization exceptions may appear in the log. Session distribution should be disabled when deploying ICEfaces applications. Support for session persistence is planned for a future release.

• Due to an apparent bug in Tomcat 5.x, users have occasionally reported seeing the following error when using ICEfaces with Tomcat 5.x or JBoss 4.0.x: "SEVERE: ICEfaces could not initialize JavaServer Faces. Please check that the JSF .jar files are installed correctly." This issue can be resolved by including the following listener in the web.xml:
  
  <listener>
    <listener-class>
       com.sun.faces.config.ConfigureListener
    </listener-class>
</listener>

• Apache Tomcat v5.5

• Tutorials bundled with the ICEfaces release will not build and deploy to Tomcat 5.5 with MyFaces due to a conflict related to jsp-api.jar.  To build and deploy tutorials on Tomcat 5.5 with MyFaces, it is necessary to modify the .../install_dir/ICEfaces-1.5/icefaces/samples/tutorial/build.properties and set tomcat55=true prior to building the application.

• Apache Tomcat v6.0

• To use ICEfaces with Tomcat v6.0 these jars that are included in the ICEfaces distribution must be removed from the web application (note that the sample application build script target for Tomcat 6 will include the correct .jars in the .war file):
  • el-api.jar
  • xercesImpl.jar
  • xml-apis.jar

• BEA Weblogic Server 9

• In order to run ICEfaces on the BEA Weblogic Server 9, the html and core tld files located in jsf-impl.jar should be extracted from the jar file and placed into the WEB-INF folder of any application you want to deploy.

• OC4J 10.1.3

• You must configure a non-standard web.xml file (not the one included in the ICEfaces bundle) in order for ICEfaces applications to run correctly on the OC4J server. This is due to a bug in the OC4J server servlet "forward" feature that results in request parameters from a previously forwarded request to be incorrectly re-used by subsequent forwarded requests. See the Oracle OC4J 10.1.3 Deployment Guide in the ICEfaces knowledge base for details.

• Websphere Application Server 6.0.0.1

• Websphere requires a special class-loader configuration for use with ICEfaces. See the Application Server Deployment Guides in the ICEfaces knowledge-base for details.

• A bug in the application server prevents the Timezone Step 3+ tutorials from running correctly. A WebSphere patch is available from IBM that resolves this issue: APAR numberPQ99195, http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=180&uid=swg1PQ99195.

Support

Open source community support is available at http://www.icefaces.org.

For information on commercial support, professional services, and training, please visit http://support.icefaces.org.

About ICEfaces

ICEfaces delivers extensions to Java ServerFaces (JSF) that provide an AJAX-enabled rich presentation environment for JSF applications. ICEfaces brings value to any Java EE development project that needs to provide superior presentation capabilities to the web application user. In particular, ICEfaces provides the following features:

• Smooth, incremental page updates that do not require a full page refresh to achieve presentation changes in the application.
• Server-initiated asynchronous presentation updates for dynamic instantaneous data push.
• The ICEfaces Component Suite, a complete rich JSF component suite that fully leverages ICEfaces capabilities.
• Intelligent form processing that facilitates fine-grained interactions with the user as they manipulate a form.
• API support for rapid development of group-aware and collaborative applications, such as Chat, Webcast, social apps., etc.
• JSP or Facelets based development.
• Tool integrations for leading Java IDEs.
• Support for leading Java EE frameworks, such as Spring and JBoss Seam.
• Support for portlet development.

Learn More

This ICEfaces release comes with extensive documentation that will help you understand the product thoroughly. Documentation for this release is located in your installation directory at .../install_dir/icefaces/docs/. The following documents are provided in PDF format:

1. ICEfaces Getting Started Guide: This guide takes you through product installation, environment configuration, demo app installation, and a basic 7-stage tutorial. This guide also contains information related to support for different application server environments and development tools.
2. ICEfaces Developer's Guide: This guide contains information relevant to developing applications with ICEfaces. It describes the ICEfaces architecture, and explains key concepts that the ICEfaces developer should be aware of. It also provides a complete reference guide that covers APIs, configuration, components (including the ICEfaces Component Suite) and TLDs, and covers advanced topics like server-initiated rendering.

ICEfaces documentation is also available on-line at http://documentation.icefaces.org/.

License Notice

License agreements can be found in the .../install_dir/icefaces/docs/license directory.

© Copyright 2005-2008 ICEsoft Technologies, Inc.